esemplastic

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English

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Etymology

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From Greek ἐς ‘into’ + ἕν + πλαστικός (from πλάσσειν ‘to mould’). Coined by Coleridge, probably after German ineinsbildung ‘forming into one’.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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esemplastic (not comparable)

  1. Unifying; having the power to shape disparate things into a unified whole.
    • 1893: all the verses when taken together [...] are deficient in harmony, and consequently there is little or no fusion. The esemplastic power of the writer's feeling was not strong enough, did not extend beyond the individual verse. — Hiram Corson, A Primer of English Verse (pp. 21–22)
    • 2003: he [...] developed a doctrine of the organic (‘esemplastic’) imagination, over and against the passive and mechanical faculty of ‘fancy’ — Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason (Penguin 2004, p. 405)